


If I could fly I'd be coming right back home to you

by AuntRose



Category: Justice League - All Media Types, Wonder Woman - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Gen, M/M, Steve Trevor Lives, diana is everybody's mother ok
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:54:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24258493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuntRose/pseuds/AuntRose
Summary: “How do I look?”“You look a bit roughed up,” Diana admitted. “But not a day over thirty four.”“I think you mean one hundred and thirty four.”-Steve wakes up one hundred years after his last memory. He makes his way back to Diana.
Relationships: Diana (Wonder Woman)/Steve Trevor
Comments: 7
Kudos: 55





	If I could fly I'd be coming right back home to you

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone!
> 
> I'm so happy to be finally posting this. I'm working on the rest of it, but I thought I would post the first part, as it's finished. I hope you guys enjoy it!
> 
> Have a nice time.
> 
> Also yes, the title is a one direction song because it still breaks my heart and I thought it fit Steve and Diana nicely.

Somewhere in Belgium,  
Tuesday November 10th, 2018

The last time Steve thought he had died, a goddess had taken him out of the ocean and he had coughed salt water back up on a beach. 

Not that he would remember that.

He didn’t wake up as much as he felt flames eat him alive. He tried screaming, but could barely manage to open his mouth; although that led to air reaching his lungs - but that, again, felt like flames, reducing his insides to ashes. He tried screaming, again. His body wouldn’t even respond. 

His first thought was that he was dying… again? Why would he be dying again? Can’t you only die once?

The fire started to withdraw, slowly. He could feel the tips of his fingers, maybe his toes. Definitely the cold, hard ground he was laying on. 

A sound finally managed to get through his vocals chords, but it resembled a howling animal, crying for help, desperate, on the verge of death, than a human being in need of help. Whichever way was exactly how he felt. He would rather have been able to actually cry for help; maybe firemen could make the fire stop licking each and everyone of his cells, maybe they could make that toxic smell disappear, and help his get some fresh air in his lungs. 

There was no fire. He realized that when he opened his eyes, and gasped for air, please, no more smoke, just air.

He grabbed the soil under him and clung to it, burying his fingers in the mud through the grass. Grass was cold. Cold was good, so he reached for more of it. It relieved him, and he could move his arms, as the wild fire inside him calmed down, though it was still spread throughout his chest, which he reached for immediately.

But again, there was no fire. Just a rusty military uniform, and under that, skin, cold skin. 

He managed a cough, at last. Nothing physically came out of his lungs, but he could have sworn he saw ashes - minuscule, grey ashes - and he screamed, at that, screamed a real scream, a human sound, that turned into spitting bile up, that almost turned into throwing up but his stomach resisted, so he just coughed some more. 

Nothing, or rather no one, responded. He barely heard his own echo through the woods.

Woods, he was surrounded by woods. 

Where the fuck was he? 

He let go of the grass and used the little strength his arms had to help him sit up. 

Grass, and meadow, and woods, and a dark blue sky. No one, nothing in sight, just the sun, rising or setting, he couldn’t tell. His breathing was ragged, but at least he was breathing, which meant he was alive, but he had a terrible feeling in his gut that was not a good thing. 

Steve Trevor was alive - hold on, Steve Trevor?

He looked at himself, his hands and his uniform stained with mud, lost God only knows where on Earth.

Steve Trevor, right. He was captain Steve Trevor, american pilot assigned to British intelligence. That phrase sounded familiar. 

He was alive. He had a name. Now - where the fuck was he, and how did he get there?

After coughing up what felt like ashes once more, he tried to remember… anything. If he could remember anything, that would help. A name, a face, a reason why he was here, anything.

Nothing. Just fire. And- gas? Something toxic in the air. 

His legs barely held him up, when he tried using them. He wouldn’t figure out what he had been doing, although something clicked in his brain, and his legs gave up on him.

A plane? 

Had he been thrown off his plane and that was how he had ended up here?

How would he have survived that? 

A plane, right, he was a pilot. He must have crashed, and if that was the case he should be able to find his plane nearby. He got back up with some difficulty. Each step was a trip back and forth to hell - as if his body had forgotten how to. As if he hadn’t used his body in years. 

But where to go? Surely his plane couldn’t be far away, but where to start?

Studying his surroundings with clearer eyes, he figured he shouldn’t go for the woods, where he might have gotten lost. 

In the distance, a couple of lights and a whir made their way down a path Steve couldn’t make out, catching him off guard. Looking for a road would be a much better option than looking for a crashed plane with next to no sunlight. He could always go back later in the day, once he would have reached whatever village was the closest, and hopefully someone could lend him a hand. 

The world as Steve knew it was not the world he was experiencing since he crashed his plane (that he still needed to go and look for.)

The nearest village had been a good thirty-minute walk away. Meadows around him had basked in sunlight as he stepped into in own shadow, down a road that seemed to lead nowhere for the most part of his journey. He would call it a journey; his legs were not holding him tall, he had tripped over his own feet several times. 

No other car had passed. 

At a crossroad, a couple of traffic signs had indicated Veld, if he kept walking straight ahead, and that rang a bell. Had he been here? He went straight ahead.

Now, sat some weird bar, selling cigarettes and morning papers but also lots, and lots of colored magazines, some of them showing off naked women, a strong coffee served by a man almost as old as Steve’s body felt, he was slowly coming to his senses.

Something was terribly wrong.

When he had walked into the bar, the owner had frowned and asked him (in french) if he thought his costume was amusing. Steve had responded in a rusty french that he had no idea what the man was talking about, and explained that he had crashed his plane a couple of miles away. At that, the man had asked him if he was drunk, and although he tried to explain that he was not - he was, at most, a little shaken and roughed up from his accident - but the man had none of it, had sat him down and offered coffee, muttering that it was on the house, but that was only because he was drunk.

Which he was definitely not. 

Steve figured the newspaper folded on the corner of the table was from the day before, as the new one was just then getting set up in the racks for clients to buy. No one had come into the store yet. He must have been the first of the day. 

Yesterday’s newspaper might help him remember something other than his name, he thought, so he grabbed it and color - why was everything printed in color? - and picture of blond haired, rather old man, standing in front of the american flag; the paper titled “TRUMP: BIENTÔT DEUX ANS.”

He wondered, for a second, who the hell was that Trump guy, before his eyes caught the date. Yesterday’s date. Not a century into the future’s date. 

He folded the paper back up. 

Maybe the man had been right. Maybe he was drunk, maybe this a just a fever-induced dream that he was just about to wake up from, because that’s the moment when you wake up when you have a bad dream - the moment when you fall, you spin, and nothing feels real. You wake up.

He didn’t wake up. He just sat there, in some shady place, wearing a hundred-years old military uniform, in 2018.

He could have sworn he felt the slightest flame in his stomach. 

“You okay boy?” The man asked in english as he walked back to him. “

“Uh- Uh yeah, yes.” 

The man eyed him up and frowned again. 

“Just umm, just a little drunk, I guess.” He added, slurring his words on purpose, and offering the poor man a tempting smile. 

He got up and blessed his mind for going for that lie, because his legs were still frail. Adrenaline was rushing through his veins, but that was different from what he had just experimented- he was thrilled. The man seemed to believe him. 

Steve kept a hand on the newspaper and waited for the man to turn his back to him to put it into his jacket’s pocket. 

“Thank you for the coffee,” he tried to articulate in french, as he walked out of the shop, cafe, whatever that place was, and into the streets. 

Lying had been easy. Too easy. His mind had barely had the time to wrap around, well, whatever situation he was in. For a split second, he saw light, and women, all around him, and a shining rope holding him tight and heard himself scream that he was a spy.

Right, as if. He was just a poor guy who crashed his plane trying to fight the best he could in a… war?

He had fought in a war?

Well that explained the uniform. 

That could explain why he had crashed his plane, why he was wearing a uniform, but that did not explain much more. And it certainly didn’t explain why he woke up in twenty seventeen when he was pretty sure the last date he remembered was nineteen eighteen. November nineteen eighteen.  
He walked the streets of Veld as he contemplated what his options were.

If this was a dream, which was the best case scenario, he was going to wake up. Soon. Probably. If this was not a dream, and Steve had a feeling he was indeed, not going to wake up, he had to hide. Set his mind straight. 

There was a church. He found a priest that took him in, and offered shelter without asking questions. 

He took the opportunity and prayed with him a few times, but three days later when the priest knocked on the door of the bedroom Steve had stayed in, he was gone and had left no trace.

Paris, France,  
Thursday November 22nd, 2018

Art could talk, Diana would argue. 

It told stories meant to outlive the men who suffered them, leaving their heritage onto younger men’s mind, lingering through history, hopefully inspiring generations to come. She was glad to witness, millenniums later, that men kept investigating and sharing the antique history that she herself had learned on Themyscira. Men might not believe in the gods, they might refer to it as mythology, but they were diligent on teaching the youngest pupils to latin and ancient greek. 

Diana wished she could have explained that the pantheon had sacrificed itself for mankind; but mankind didn’t believe in its existence. 

If men had nothing, they had the audacity. 

Mankind believed in one God. How lonely his existence must be, Diana thought.

Her belief in mankind hadn’t changed much in the century she had lived in man’s world. Men could be good, and fair; men could be wicked, and ravage the Earth. (It was worrying, really, how every decade or so one would convince himself he could do what no one had done before him. Men could be as hopeful as they could be dumb, sometimes.) But men deserved peace, and so they deserved Diana’s protection. She had a duty to serve as their guardian; it was, after all, her destiny.

Her father had decided so, a long, long time ago. 

She walked the Earth, a demi God among men, and did her best without revealing herself.

Her armour had stayed in a closet, collecting dust, for decades. She never tried it on, avoided the golden shimmer, didn’t think about how leather and bronze fitted her. A spider had elected her right boot to be its home. Poor Hephaistos would probably have sent her drowning in the styx in the blink of an eye if he had seen that. 

The delicate artistry of its craft would have earned her armour a nice spot in the Louvre. She could almost see it in the Ancient Greece departement, standing tall behind a thick glass box; she could almost imagine people pressing against one another to stare at it in awe; she could imagine researchers ringing her phone incessantly.

But she needed her armour, now. Just like she needed to answer her phone, which wasn’t only ringing in her musings. 

“Diana Prince,” she answered.

“Hey Di, it’s Barry,” the young man’s voice cheered her. “Are you busy right now?”

“I’m at work, but I can always spare a few minutes for you,” she said as she sat back in her leather chair. “What’s up?”

“Oh, uh, I just wanted to know if you were coming by this weekend? At the manor?”

“Probably, yes, Bruce said he wanted us all there on sunday.”

“Great! So how about we get the league to have a sleepover on saturday? I know you technically don’t have a room here but Bruce just had interior designers but they came up with-” 

Diana shook her head as she let Barry ramble on and on. The boy had been begging the league for a sleepover ever since he had moved in; she supposed Bruce’s brooding didn’t make a very good company. Barry never talked about friends, or relatives, or even acquaintances, besides the league. 

“I’m only coming saturday night if you cook dinner, no take away,” she teased him.

“You just want me to cook an obscene amount of food so there can be leftover for brunch on sunday,” he protested loudly. 

Diana grinned. Barry was a sweet kid, but she enjoyed having the privacy of her own place, and the manor… well the manor shoe wasn’t comfortable staying at, settling in, just yet. 

“I’ll let you know how work goes on saturday, alright?” she tried to compromise. She knew she would not stay over, but if she could get off soon enough, maybe they could have dinner together. 

“See you on saturday night!” He called out, and the line shot off before Diana could add anything. 

She left her office wondering where she would take Barry to dinner on saturday, lost in her thoughts as her heels clicked quietly on the floor of the quiet corridor. The Louvre never had slow days, especially Diana’s department, but she was lucky enough to work behind the scenes. She passed by a couple of empty offices. The french had a habit of stopping for coffee every so often, no matter how busy the day was; the sky could have opened wide above their heads and the wrath of every god could have unleashed the planet, they would have stopped dead in their tracks at four o’clock for a cup of coffee. 

Chatter from the break room reached Diana’s ears before she had even reached it. 

“They’ve only been together for a year, I can’t believe they’re already engaged,” a voice complained.

“I hope we get an invite to the wedding, I feel like dressing up,” another answered.

“Why would you want to go to you ex’s wedding?”

“He’s not my ex,” the girl hissed. “We just went on a couple of dates years ago.”

“Still. I can’t believe you got over him coming out so quickly.”

Diana’s lips turned up as she stopped at the doorstep.

“They’re too cute for me to be bitter.”

Diana knocked a couple of times on the door, announcing herself, and walked in to find two girls she recognized from the modern department. 

“Good afternoon, girls.”

“Hi miss Prince!” the voices sing sang as one.

“Who’s getting married?” She smirked.

“Jason and his boyfriend. He proposed this weekend.”

“Jason from my department?” Diana asked, pouring coffee in the same mug she always did (she might have been catching on those french habits.)

“Are there any other Jason working here?”

“I don’t think so, but I don’t remember the latest intern name, so…”

Lille, France  
Friday November 24th, 2018

Steve remembered a face.

Which shouldn’t have been a problem, except it was, because it was all he remembered. And it almost led to his death, again.

He had been living - hiding, really - in the top story of an abandoned building for several days, snatching whatever he could find. An old mattress, wet from the rain. Clothes too large for him but modern so he could go out and about without standing out too much. A couple of books, one so badly written it made him wince, but maybe that was just twenty first century writing, and another in french, which helped him practice. And newspapers, to keep up with the time.

That only made him feel worse.

He had worked out who that Trump character was, but decided against reading about him ever again. At least the war was over; wars still raged, and they had bombs to wipe out planet Earth now, so that was great, and that Trump guy could use them whenever he pleased. But diplomacy looked a whole lot better, and there was electricity almost all over the globe, and people watched… Television? Was that the word? 

He wouldn’t resolve himself to steal food, so he had walked into a soup kitchen, one night. Winter was settling over Europe, the cold wind was frosting his cheeks and the clothes he had stolen were not enough to cover him up; but he enjoyed the freezing wind. It almost made him forget the flames he thought he had woken up in.

There were a few men sitting, eating, when he had pushed the door. Electricity - he was still getting used to it - ran the place, brightly lighting it up and maybe heating it up, too. He wasn’t sure how that worked. 

“Good evening, Sir,” a friendly voice greeted him. “First time coming?”

An middle-aged woman was standing in front of him, a gentle smile on her lips. He didn’t have the time to form a responses before she added with a thick northern french accent:

“It’s okay, taking the first step is the hardest part. Why don’t you sit, I’ll get you something to eat, yes?”

Steve had a hard time following what she was saying, but he got the most of it and sat on his own in a corner of the room. It wasn’t the most welcoming of places, but the few people working - the middle-aged woman who had greeted him, another woman with blond hair and laughing voices coming from the backroom - seemed to make it work. There were mostly men, sat down, some talking, some focused on their meal, some playing cards, but he spotted a young woman with very short hair, and it hit him like a ton of bricks that life had gone on. The war had ended, the world had changed, people lived and he still existed. Or existed again. Who knew. 

The woman came back with a grey tray bearing a plate full of pasta, a bowl of soup and some bread. 

The french still fancied their bread, at least that hadn’t changed. 

“Bon appétit!” She smiled at him again when she laid down the tray in front of him. “Let me know if you’d like some coffee after that.”

Steve was glad no one was trying to talk to him. He trusted neither his french - which was getting better - nor his voice. He had tried speaking, when he had been alone, but he still tasted ashes in his mouth and his throat had burnt, again, faintly, but reminding him he had woken up in a field five days ago, a century after his last memory. On day two, when the priest had been busy not checking up in him for a second, he had tried looking for his place. He had searched all afternoon, in vain. There was no plane.

But there was food, warm food, on his plate, so he did his best not to devour it. Food tasted different as well, he thought. There was no flavor. 

But he was not going to complain about his food’s lack of flavor when he hadn’t eaten in days. He finished up quickly, and took the opportunity for coffee, which he hoped wouldn’t be so different. Coffee beans couldn’t have changed that much, could they? 

Hesitantly, he walked up to the ladies chatting behind the table that served as a counter. A man’s voice coming from what Steve guessed was the kitchen was telling a story, but the man kept taking laugh breaks. He delivered the last line at last ; the lady that had greeted Steve laughed at that, and she might as well have set him on fire. He had heard that laugh before.

“Sir, are you okay?” 

“Sir?”

“I’m- I’m fine, I’m okay-” His head spiraled down, and the woman’s laugh spined with him, loud and clear, and as he closed his eyes suddenly he saw a smile, and crinkled eyes and rosy cheeks, long brown hair and his own hand in that hair, cradling that face.

“I’m calling the emergency services!”

“I’m fine, please don’t call anyone,” he tried to articulate. 

The woman had sat him down on the nearest chair, a hand resting on his shoulder. There had been a hand on that same shoulder, long, delicate fingers, red from the winter air, it was that woman’s hand, the one he remembered, she had held him close and laughed.

He seized the hand and violently took it off of his shoulder. He couldn’t stand the touch, the memory, the smells and the lights, all too bright, and the voices, all too loud, almost eclipsing the laugh ringing in his brain.

“Sir, help is on the way, it’s going to be okay,” the blond woman tried to comfort him as she reached for him. He blocked her hand before she could reach his arm and shut his eyes again, desperate for the face he had just seen, but it was gone, and so was the laugh, it was all gone as if it had never happened.

He stormed out of the door in a panic, closing and opening in eyes in a frenzy, wishing to summon the face.

He let go of the door frame and took a few tentative steps forward. 

She must have had a name, but Steve couldn’t come up with it. Nothing came, actually - no other memory, just a laugh, and a smile, and sparkling eyes, and her hands and his hands and he must have loved her. She might have loved him, too, because they stood close, closer than Steve would let himself get to anyone; or she had trusted him, at the very least. He hoped she had loved him.

He had spent every hour he had been awake wondering who he had been, and what his life had been like. Besides being a pilot in a world war, what life had he lead? Did he have family? Parents who worried about him, to whom he would write often? A wife, maybe children? 

Was she his wife? 

He wouldn’t know. Just like he wouldn’t know twenty-first century car honks, so he wouldn’t recognize it soon enough. Before he knew it, a large, dark vehicule slammed into him, sending his body flying several foot away. His body lended with some cracks, awakening the fire in his joints, his muscles, every one of his organs, making him groan from pain, sheer pain and why did he always feel that fire, there was no fire why wouldn't it just stop?!

“Oh my God Sir are you alright?” He understood through the ringing in his ears. 

He was not, he was on fire, how could anyone not see that?

The car had stopped, and a young man, a kid really, had run up to him. 

He didn’t bother answering. He couldn’t feel anything but fire, although he knew his clothes were mostly wet from the gutter on the side of the road he had landed in. He groaned as he forced his way back on his knees, ignored the distraught young man advising him to stay down, then on his feet, and walked away as fast as he could manage, water dripping from his clothes, in searing pain.

Gotham City, United States of America  
Sunday November 25th, 2018

Bruce Wayne did not have a soft spot for stray cats, fuck you. 

The manor he had been rehabilitating over the last few months had rooms, yes, lots of them. That didn’t mean he intended on filling them.

Barry had settled down almost immediately, making his way past everyone when Bruce had showed the league around, claiming the master bedroom and its giant bath on the first floor, just above the kitchen; so now Bruce had a teenager eating tens of thousands of calories’ worth of his food living with him. He had let his bag fall on the floor with a loud thud, ran around the room, his room, at the speed of light, and when Bruce’s eyes could finally spot him, he was lying in the middle of the bed with stars in his eyes.

Bruce had hoped that his metabolism needed as much sleep as it needed food. It did not. Not enough for his liking. 

Victor accumulated clothes, a toothbrush, his favorite hoodie eventually, in the room down the hall from Barry, who insisted on having him sleep over at the manor more and more often to keep him company because Bruce was boring (was he boring?) and so that room became his over the course of a few weeks. He was reluctant on leaving his father, but the man came over for lunch a few times, and shook Bruce’s hand firmly and thanked him for everything the league was doing for his son. (Bruce didn’t cry. Clark did.)

Arthur had whistled his way up in the manor and only left a few shirts and a pair of socks in a room on the west wing, which offered a balcony Bruce was pretty sure Arthur could jump from and into the lake. 

Clark and Diana refused to pick rooms, explaining they would rather stay with Lois for Clark, and rent a place for Diana. Bruce could not convince her otherwise, so anytime shit went down in Gotham, she fled from Paris and got herself luxurious hotel rooms. 

It was a brisk morning of november when the league had gotten together in the dining room at the Wayne manor for brunch, much to Barry’s dismay. Diana had made coffee, Clark waffles; Barry had shoved the whole plate down his throat as fast as he could as Victor and Arthur’s cheered on him to go faster.

In the corner of his eye, Alfred has caught Diana shaking her head, but smiling at the kid nevertheless. He almost teared up at the sight. 

Finally, a family was back into the this place, having breakfast together, chatting, bringing life an joy and talk of evil creatures and fighting lessons for the youngest. (Victor was strong, so he managed, but Barry wouldn’t hurt a fly.) Chatter filled the room, ranging from Arthur and Clark’s deep tones to Diana’s gentle but firm one. Things had been quiet in Gotham for the last couple of weeks, so Bruce hadn’t had much to present; a few leads, a couple of hints. Nothing too exciting. 

Which was for the best, because they could all use a break for once. 

“Anything else?” Clark asked af he put down his coffee cup.

“Yes, actually. A man survived a car accident in Lille, France.”

“Plenty of people survive car accidents.” 

“Plenty of people survive accidents,” Barry pointed at Victor’s robotic limbs. 

“Not that kind of accidents, and when they do they don’t just walk away.”

Bruce pulled up the surveillance footage on the screen. The video playing was entirely gray, and the poor quality made it hard to decipher anything. It happened quickly : a man limped his way out of the corner of the screen and onto the street, when a car hit him at full speed, throwing the poor man’s body in the air, then on the ground a few feet away.

“Oh man that must have hurt,” Barry commented.

It took the man on the screen a minute, at most, to get back up and limp away again, leaving the frame.

“Do we have a name?” Diana enquired.

“No, I have nothing. No one matching his description was admitted in a hospital,” Bruce explained as he got the video started once more. “But that was last night, so he might be bleeding out in an alley for all we know.”

“No clear shot of his face?” 

“He’s turning away from the camera the whole time.”

“Do you think he knew what he was doing?” 

“Maybe, maybe not. It’s hard to tell. Either he knew what he was doing or he’s just a lucky homeless guy.”

“As lucky as a homeless man can be,” Victor snorts.

“If he’s still in France, I can go and look for him,” Diana suggested. “I might be able to find him.”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to be found,” Arthur argued. “Maybe he doesn’t even need to be found, he might have just been lucky and survived that accident.”

“He must be one hell of a lucky guy to have survived that.”

“Homeless man gets hit by a car, survives: wins luckiest man on earth title,” Barry interrupted. 

Diana smiled at his remark; for all his awkward jokes and constant musings, Barry had a good heart. One of a child, almost - she knew about him as much as the content of Bruce’s file she had flipped through, and the lines he cracked to break the tension in the room, but that alone told her everything she needed to know about him.

And she loved children.

She loved toddlers and their rounds cheeks and baby skins, she loved passing by a kindergarten on her way to work and see them run around, she loved kids discovering the world, she loved teenagers figuring out their place in the world - and most of all, Diana loved Barry Allen, the face hair he was trying to grow and the never-ending awe plastered on his face. 

She cared for her other team mates of course - loved them even, all equally.

But Barry was a baby to her eyes. She almost expecting him to be made of clay.

“Of course he’s not lucky,” she clarified, “He just escaped death.”

“We’re not sure about that,” he grumbled back.

“Yeah, this might turn out to be a dead end.”

“Oh my God,” Barry sighed as Arthur fistbumped Victor under the table. 

Lille, France  
Monday December 10th, 2018

The twenty-first century was too loud for Steve, but it offered its share of sweetness. 

For starters, electricity ran everywhere, lighting up the city at all times, so he could stroll the streets at night, his hands buried in his pants’ pockets, a couple of hoodies covering him up. He had passed a shop’s window on night and stopped to stare at his own reflection. He barely recognized himself; the clothes still looked odd to him and his beard was starting to itch his face. That seemed to be fashionable these days, so he went with it; the more he blended in, the more time he was buying himself to figure things out. 

What Steve liked the most in this century so far was that people owned so much, so many jewellery, so many clothes, so many random artifacts he didn’t recognize (he wasn’t up to date with technology yet, although he had figured out that the shining rectangles were phones. They were so small it baffled him.) - and in owning so much, they were careless. He had snuck into a couple of places; one of which he almost got caught in, the other he spent days studying to make sure he would be safe. 

He had been staying there the past few days. From what he had understood, the owner didn’t live there, and rented it once in a while for a few days. 

His body had acted before his mind had the time to wrap around the situation; a rush of adrenaline had shot through his veins, and he had broken in the tidy apartment swiftly, silently. 

His second-favorite thing about the twenty-first century was almost unlimited supply of warm water he could bath in. (It had been to hot the first time he set a foot in it, burning his skin, sending his mind spin into flames again. He had settled for lukewarm water and bubbles. At least that wasn’t threatening.)

Luckily, the owner had a bookshelf full of history books; Steve hadn’t known that before breaking in, but he was glad he had picked such a nice and convenient place. 

He was not so glad about what he found out. 

He had gone to school, he remembered as much - he knew about the antique ages, romans and greeks and egyptians and all of their gods, none of which he could recall, he knew about the french revolution, he knew about the british empire and the history of his own country. 

The book had a few chapters on World War One. He had gone through them in a frenzy, only to find out he had died a day before it ended. That was just his luck. 

When he had founded out there had been a second world war, a mere twenty years after, he had seen flashes, white flashes surrounding him, a loud ringing in his ears, and the book had hit the floor, slipping out of his hand as he ran to the kitchen sink and threw up.

He had died a day before the armistice was signed, and war ravaged the world a few years later, making millions of victims, most likely including his own family.

He had died for nothing.

And now he couldn’t die. 

The car that had hit him should have broken a few bones and caused internal damage, but besides a stinging pain that lasted a few days, Steve had been fine. (As fine as he was these days.)

The lack of food and water should have killed him. He had felt much weaker, but after a week, he had realized there was no way to cheat death. 

He felt pain in a different way he had experienced before. It stinged, it burned, everything seemed to burn : even the cold felt like flames licking his flesh. He tolerated nothing above a lukewarm temperature, except for his food, and boy, cooking had been a whole new adventure. It took him a few hours to figure out how the heater thing that made his food turn worked; it wasn’t an oven, but it heated up water and leftovers in the fridge. 

The twenty first century was not a figment of his imagination, and Steve was starting to make peace with that. 

There seemed to be no going back; if scientists had discovered a way to time travel, he figured it would have been mentioned somewhere, anywhere, on the news, in the books at the apartment he was staying at, in those at the library he had visited a couple of times. 

He was on his own.

He didn’t mind being alone, but he wish he could have woken up sooner in time. Not that he had chosen to wake up a whole century later, to the exact day he had made out, but if he could have found someone that knew him, it would have helped a great deal. His mind was restless; he didn’t know if he was remembering things or if he was making a story up.

There had been the war. Violent, brutal fights, a lot of flying around and speaking languages he couldn’t recall a word of (he was pretty sure he had been able to speak german at some point.) He dreamt about it, when he managed to fall asleep, but the sound of bombs exploding always pulled him out of a slumber filled with images of missing limbs, deadly injured men bleeding out on the battlefield.

But among those dreadful memories, there was a dream, it had to be a dream. No water was ever so crystal clear, no island only carried women warriors, no rope, no matter how shiny, could make him admit he was a spy to an army from a country that figured on no map, even those, highly detailed, of the twenty first century. 

He had seen the woman he first remembered on that island. She stood tall, confident, her voice was soft with inquiries about what she called the world of men. 

His two-days long trip on Paradise Island - look, he had no idea what it was called, so he was going to refer to it as such, because that was the most simple way to describe it - clogged his thoughts. He spent days and nights reliving it, focusing on the details, holding onto every piece of information he could grasp.

Bombs, again. And gunshots, all the time. The trenches, filled with mud. Dead bodies, civilians crying, soldiers ready to kill again. 

And among them; a warrior, climbing a ladder to cross no man’s land - 

Diana. 

He shot up, wide awake, in a pool of sweat, the name - her name - on repeat in his mouth.

He grabbed his head in his hands, pulling at his hair, rocking his body back and forth; eyes closed or not, Diana was everywhere, he was calling her name in worry, he was whispering it against her skin, he was watching her laugh and making her dance and arguing with her and kissing her, he had kissed her, loved her, he had held her body tight against his and made love to her and she was gone, she had to be dead, and he was alive, and the only person he remembered was dead. 

He groaned as he forced his way out of bed, his vision blurry with tears. He relied on clinging to the wall to reach the bathroom. Without bothering to turn on the light, he turned on the sink and splashed water over his face. 

What the fuck had he done so wrong that he had to wake up from the dead in the next century?

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading this until the end!
> 
> Second part coming soon - I don't know how many parts this will have yet, but I'm thinking three for the moment, and I might make a multiverse out of it. 
> 
> Please let me know what you thought of it. I hope my English was correct! If any mistake comes up please let me know and I'll correct it.


End file.
